Mischief Managed
by Cantica10
Summary: An alternate universe in which James and Lily survive and Harry grows up as he was intended to: with his every effort inspired and encouraged by the Marauders. This story is written with the Marauders's great motto always in mind: "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." If you're looking for a laugh, look no further! (co-authored with You will always end up here! on ao3)
1. Chapter 1

**Welcome, welcome, one and all! This is my first Harry Potter fanfiction and it is in fact a collaborative piece; I have a very dear friend who is helping me to write it. We were discussing at length all the glorious possibilities of what could have happened if James and Lily had not died and Harry had grown up as he was intended to... constantly encouraged by the Marauders. So without further ado I present to you the first chapter, in which we assume James would have taken up work in the Ministry as an auror. I daresay you'll encounter a few other names and faces on the way...**

**Enjoy!**

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><p>James Potter was having what most would call a Bad Day. The worst day, in fact, that he could ever remember having since his start as an auror some six months previously. He would have thought the rather miraculous defeat of the dark wizard known as Lord Voldemort a month ago would have made his job much easier; however, it had only served to make the Death Eaters more vicious in their efforts to continue his anti-muggle campaign.<p>

It had really been an accident that had been the downfall of the greatest dark wizard of all time – a group of aurors had caught up with him and a few of his most devoted followers, and the Dark Lord had been a bit too preoccupied with dodging a severing charm to realize a wayward blasting curse had hit the stone pillars behind him. It had sent half the abandoned castle that had been serving as his hideout toppling down, effectively crushing him, his devotees, and all the aurors in the premises.

It was, as stated by Rita Skeeter in her _Daily Prophet_ article on the battle, "one of the most anticlimactic endings she had ever had the misfortune to report." On an unrelated note, the paper's headline that morning had been "You-Know-Who's Efforts Fall Flat." It was the most successful edition of the paper since it was first released in 1743.

It seemed such an undignified end to such a powerful dark wizard had lit an inferno in the hearts of the Death Eaters, as if they were desperate to prove their cause would not die as easily as their leader. Reports of intense muggle abuse had been pouring in for a month, and as a relatively new auror in the department, James had been assigned to office work rather than field, and was forced to run reports to and from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office several times a day.

James's only consolation was that Arthur Weasley, head of the department, seemed to be having an even worse time than he was. When James trudged into his office for the fifth time that day, Arthur swore colorfully and snatched the report in James's hands away, repeating the same rant James had been hearing for the better part of a month now. "It's the most despicable series of muggle baiting in history! Don't these madmen have anything better to do with their time? What on earth could it possibly be now?"

He tore into the report and stared at it for a moment. "What in the name of Merlin's beard is a chainsaw?" he asked.

James was rather familiar with several muggle artifacts, his wife being muggle born, but he had never heard of a chainsaw before. "I don't know."

Arthur read through the report with a disgusted look on his face. "Well, whatever it is, a cursed one of them flew through Langley last night and decapitated half a dozen muggles! Oh, good god, that's disgusting—"

"Things going well there for you, Arthur?" James asked, rubbing at a crick in his neck and yawning.

"Well? My department hasn't received this much attention in years! Normally I'd be overjoyed, but just at the moment it's a bloody nightmare, innit?" Arthur said hurriedly, rummaging through his desk for a quill. "Tell me you at least caught the Death Eaters responsible for this chainsaw incident!"

"Dunno. I was just handed that piece of parchment and told to run it down here," James shrugged. "I expect that'll be in the report, though."

"Report – oh, of course—" Arthur scanned the parchment in his hand and let out a noise of approval. "Well, one of them, at least, who knows, could've been more responsible. Evidently the idiot wanted to stay behind and watch his handiwork…"

"The Dementors have been having a veritable feast as of late, I suspect," James said, picking up a rubber duck perched on the edge of Arthur's desk and twirling it idly in his fingers. "We've been sending an average of three suspected Death Eaters down to Azkaban a day. Not all of them will stay there, I expect, a few of them will manage to strike some deals with the Wizengamot, but at least we're clearing some of the vermin off the streets, right?"

"Well, I wish your office would hurry up already and clear the lot," Arthur grumbled, sinking into his chair and letting out a long and heavy sigh. "Late nights for the last three weeks, I've barely seen my wife, and she's running ragged what with the new baby…"

James perked up at this comment. "I didn't know Molly had the baby!"

"What? Oh, yes. At the start of March, actually… Ronald, we named him. Ronald Bilius, after my brother." The corners of Arthur's lips twitched as he thought of his newest son. James could hardly fathom having as many children as Arthur and Molly. This new baby of theirs brought their total number of children up to six, and all sons.

"Well, I know this a little late, but congratulations at any rate," James said, and Arthur smiled at him.

"I hear you're about to become a father yourself, aren't you?" Arthur asked.

"Yeah. Lily's due any day now, actually. I initially wanted to take some time off, you know, to make sure I'm there when she delivers, but what with all the work to be done around here…" James sighed.

"Oh, it'll be fine. Any half decent man would let you leave work for a day or two if you got an owl telling you your wife was having your baby," Arthur assured him. "And Mad-Eye's head of your department; I know he's fond of you. I don't think you have anything to worry about."

James cracked a grin and set the rubber duck back on Arthur's desk. "Thanks. I should probably be getting back upstairs. Other reports to run, I'm sure… bet you a sickle they'll send me back down here before the day's out, what do you say?"

"Oh, I never gamble when I know I'll lose," Arthur laughed. "Say, James, you and your wife should come round The Burrow for tea sometime when all this nonsense has died down. I know Molly would love the company."

"Careful, Arthur; I may just take you up on that offer," James joked, ducking out of the office and sprinting up the hall to catch the lift back up to the Auror department.

James returned home very late that evening; Lily was already in bed, thumbing through the latest edition of _Witch Weekly_ with the bedside lamp on. She looked up when James came into the bedroom, and seeing his weary countenance set the magazine aside. "Hard day?" she asked sympathetically.

"It's a madhouse out there," James groaned, throwing his jacket on the armchair in the corner and sinking down into his half of the bed, burying his face in his wife's shoulder. "Wish I could be home with you."

"Oh, don't worry about that. I'm fine. Remus stopped by today, kept me company. You just focus on work for now, I'm sure your office is absolute chaos what with Voldemort getting crushed and all." She grinned, morbidly amused by the circumstances of the dark wizard's death. It was the only time she had ever agreed with Rita Skeeter on any point, the fact that his death had been almost comically anticlimactic.

James smiled and kissed her cheek, his hand going to her swollen stomach. Their baby was due any day now, and he was stuck all day in the office. "I love you," he told her.

"I know you do," Lily smirked, catching his mouth with hers. "Go get dressed for bed now, I won't have you sleeping in your suit. What sort of a wife would that make me?"

James groaned half-heartedly and got up, disappearing briefly into their closet and then the bathroom. Lily resumed her reading and waited for her husband to return.

He came back into the room and fell into bed next to her. Lily sighed, genuinely feeling badly for him. She knew he hated being out all day with the possibility of missing the birth of their first child constantly weighing on his mind. She set aside her magazine and shut off the lamp, snuggling in next to him and kissing his cheek once before shutting her eyes.

She was almost certain he had fallen asleep before his voice cut through the dark. "Lily?"

"What is it, James?"

"What's a chainsaw?"

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><p><strong>We very dearly hope you'll review. Until chapter two, all!<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello again! We got so much positive response to chapter one that we couldn't wait to get this one out. Also, we really wanted to get Sirius and Remus into the story ASAP. This is a light chapter prompted by an idea we found when scrolling through the tumblr feeds, but it certainly fit and we decided we liked it enough to add it to our headcanons. So, without further ado, enjoy the second chapter!**

**Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K. Rowling. Thank heavens she grants us freedom to write about her characters!**

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><p>It was entirely by circumstance that Sirius Black found himself racing up and down Lily and James's staircase repeatedly from the front door to the master bedroom and back in a panic on the last day of July.<p>

Sirius had joined the Ministry as an auror himself with James at the start of the year, but he had recently found himself with some time off. He was, technically, suspended for "use of excessive enthusiasm and its resulting destruction" from his last field mission. He personally didn't see what his superiors were all so up in arms about; he had caught two Death Eaters. Moody had praised his accomplishments, but evidently the destruction of a muggle shopping mall in the process had been enough to warrant a two month suspension to "reflect" and "cool his head." Though he supposed he had created quite a ruckus for the Obliviators – he'd heard they'd been forced to perform no less than forty-one memory charms on various muggles who had seen his rather overzealous efforts to bring in the Death Eaters.

Pity, too, Sirius thought that morning as he let himself into the Potters' house. What with Voldemort's defeat and his followers running wild, they probably could have used the extra pair of hands.

"Lily!" he called as he shut the door behind him. "You around?"

"Sirius?" He heard her yell from the kitchen, "In here!"

He shucked off his coat and threw it onto a chair in the foyer before proceeding further into the house, entering the kitchen to find Lily standing at the stove still wearing her pyjamas and a robe, cracking eggs over a frying pan. "Morning," he grinned, his gaze finding her messy hair. Since she'd married James and become accustomed to the fact that Sirius and Lupin were constantly going to be coming over, she had given up on getting herself put together early every day before their inevitable arrival. He supposed her being nine months pregnant was probably a big factor in that, too.

"Hey, Sirius. Want some breakfast?" she asked, reaching for another egg. "Never mind, stupid question. Of course you do."

Sirius laughed. "You know me too well, Evans." He was amused to hear her sigh good-naturedly. She had argued against him using her maiden name when addressing her countless times since she'd married James, but had finally resigned herself to it when she realized Sirius was just simply not going to cease. Sirius went to her side and reached for a spatula. "Why don't you let me do the cooking?"

"Oh please, Padfoot. I'm pregnant, not helpless," Lily rolled her eyes, but stepped away from the stove and sank into one of the chairs at the breakfast table. "Just be careful with it, won't you? Last time I gave you free reign of the kitchen I ended up having to charm a sponge to scrub potatoes off the ceiling."

"Relax, would you? They're eggs. How hard can it be?" Sirius asked, prodding one of the yolks with the spatula and watching it break apart. "When did James head out?"

"About a half hour before you showed up. He's been so busy lately at the office," Lily sighed, her hand going absentmindedly to her pregnant belly. "I can't believe they didn't lift your suspension, to be honest. All the work to be done down there…"

"Honestly, I think I'd just get in the way," Sirius said bitterly, pushing the eggs around the pan. "It's a madhouse down there as it is, so I hear, and I don't think I'd be making much of a difference, really. My so-called _excessive enthusiasm_ would probably just screw things up."

"Sirius, you did collapse an entire muggle shopping center," Lily pointed out.

"Yeah, but I caught the Death Eaters, didn't I?" Sirius grumbled. "Anyway, has Remus been by lately? I know he's been applying for a few job positions lately, and he was dropping hints that he had a pretty decent chance at getting one of them."

He heard Lily gasp softly, and grinned.

"I know. That'd be great, wouldn't it? Sucks that he can't get a job as easy as the rest of us just because of his… well, you know… condition."

"Sirius," Lily said sharply.

"I mean, I get that it's not his fault, don't get me wrong," he said quickly. "I'm just saying I wish people would get over whatever bias they think is right and we can all move on with our lives—"

"Sirius, I need you to shut up for just one second, please," Lily interrupted him sternly.

He turned around. "What's gotten into you—? Lily?" he stopped, seeing the look of incredulity on her face. "Lily, what's going on?"

"The baby."

"What's wrong with the baby?!" Sirius yelped. Oh, Jesus, James would kill him if something happened to Lily or their unborn kid while he was around!

Lily inhaled sharply and then let out a long breath. "Well, if you'd expand your notice microscopically and use your brain, you might notice that my water just broke."

Sirius stared at her blankly. "You… you had water?"

"Honestly, do I have to spell it out for you?" Lily asked exasperatedly, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Sirius, _this baby is coming now_."

It took a solid ten seconds for this information to register in Sirius's mind, until it finally clunked into place. The spatula in his hand clattered to the floor. Lily was having a baby. Right there in her kitchen. He couldn't let her have the baby in the kitchen! James would murder him—

"James!" Sirius yelled, startling Lily, who flinched. "We've got to tell James! Bloody hell – how do we reach him? He isn't here! I could – I could run out and send someone to go get him from the Ministry! Oh, but god, that's all the way in London, they'd never get there in time—!"

"Sirius, James and I do have an owl," Lily said calmly, delicately standing up and taking a few steps to the stove, shutting it off. "Why don't you go fetch Agatha and I'll write a note to James telling him that you're taking me to the muggle hospital so I can have the baby."

"Agatha – right—!" Sirius exclaimed, sprinting into the living room and coaxing the beautiful barn owl perched on a peg near the open window onto his arm. He was shaking with anxiety as he slowly walked back into the kitchen. Lily was standing at the counter scratching a note onto a bit of parchment. Sirius waited impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as Agatha stuck out her leg and allowed Lily to tie the note to it. "It's for James, and do hurry, dear," Lily said to the owl, and at once Agatha took flight, swooping back towards the living room and leaving, Sirius assumed, through the window.

Free of the owl on his arm, Sirius was once again free to resume his panic. "What happens in muggle hospitals?! Why can't we go to St. Mungos?!"

"Because I am in labor, Sirius, and there is a perfectly good hospital with highly capable muggle nurses just up the street," Lily explained, shaking her head. "I'm certainly not going to use floo powder right now to get to London, can you imagine what that could do to the baby?"

"Oh… right, then… how long will you be there? Should I pack a suitcase for you?! Should I pack James a suitcase?!"

"Sirius, James and I—"

But Sirius was already thundering up the stairs for the Potters' master bedroom, searching wildly for a suitcase. "Lily?! Lily, I can't find a suitcase! Do you keep them in the closet or under the bed or – never mind, I found one!" Sirius yanked a rather large trunk out of the hall closet and drag it to the bedroom, throwing open drawers and trying to pack everything in them into the trunk.

Five minutes later he was levitating the trunk down the stairs, and stopped short when he saw Lily standing by the door, perfectly calm, with a much smaller and more reasonably sized suitcase on the floor at her feet. "Are you quite finished being ridiculous yet?" she asked.

"But – when did you –?"

"Please, Sirius, James and I have had this one packed for weeks so we'd be prepared when the baby came," Lily explained.

"Oh," Sirius said dumbly, and the trunk dropped to the floor at the foot of the stairs with a heavy _thunk_. "Are you sure you have everything you need in there?! It's awfully small!"

"Sirius, please. We're magic."

Sirius hadn't entirely registered she had spoken. "Did you pack your toothbrush?! Should I go get James's toothbrush? Does the baby have a toothbrush I should pack?! Oh, no wait, it's a baby, it won't have teeth—!"

"Sirius, I don't know if you've noticed, but I just so happen to be having a baby over here," Lily said, rolling her eyes as she watched Sirius freak out pointlessly. "Now calm down and get a move on, you dork."

"Okay… right." Sirius was breathing heavily as he hurried down the stairs and picked Lily's suitcase up. She opened the front door.

"You're driving, obviously," Lily said, pressing a set of keys into Sirius's hand. His eyes flicked briefly to his motorcycle parked in the front drive, but Lily shook her head and said sternly, "And not that dreadful motorbike of yours, either, could you imagine? We're taking James's car."

"Oh… of course," Sirius mumbled, crossing the drive to the car and placing Lily's suitcase in the backseat. He opened the passenger door for Lily and helped her lower herself into the car before he shut the door and scrambled to the driver's door, wrenching it open and practically toppling inside.

His panic didn't cease even as he drove Lily the eight blocks it took to reach the hospital. "I just… Bloody hell, I'm not ready to be a father!"

"Sirius, this isn't your baby," Lily reminded him, laughing.

"Oh, _please_, Lily. This is everyone's baby."

It was two hours later that James came racing into the hospital, finding Sirius and Remus pacing the room Lily had been set up in. His wife was the calmest one in the room, eating a tiny hospital cup of pudding and flipping through one of the muggle magazines from the waiting room. "Are you kidding me?" he asked. "My baby is about to be born and I'm the last one to arrive?"

"Remus was home and Sirius was literally in the kitchen with me when my water broke," Lily shrugged, scraping her pudding out of the bottom of its plastic cup with a spoon. "Calm down. The doctor says I won't be ready to actually have this kid for a few hours yet."

"I still don't understand why you're having this baby in a muggle hospital," Remus said. He'd been examining various aspects of the room since he'd arrived.

"It's pretty much going to be the same whether it's here or at St. Mungos," Lily pointed out with a shrug. "Magical kids aren't born any different than muggle ones."

James sighed and went to his wife's side, kissing her forehead before perching himself on the edge of her bed. "I can't believe we're about to be parents," he said.

Lily smiled. "Believe it, Prongs. This is definitely happening."

James grinned back at her and absentmindedly lifted one of her bare feet into his lap, massaging it. She sighed and settled into her thin hospital pillows. Nothing to do now but wait.

Sirius and Remus both seated themselves at last. The room was eerily quiet.

Finally, Sirius cracked a grin and asked Remus, "Hey, Moony, when does our relationship get to the point that we can give each other foot massages?"

At once, James, Lily, and Remus all replied. "Shut up, Sirius." And the four of them burst into laughter.

Lily and James's child came into the world so close to midnight that he was almost born on the first of August rather than the thirty-first of July. Remus and Sirius waited anxiously in the sitting room while Lily had the baby, pacing back and forth until James came in and announced he had a son, and it was the first time either of them could ever remember seeing him cry.

Sirius and Remus first saw the newest member of the Potter family through the window of the room where the muggles kept all the newborn babies when they weren't with their mothers. They'd both sat there in awe, realizing their best mate was a father and both silently vowing to be a major part of the boy's life.

They were finally allowed in to see Lily and James the next morning, after a sleepless night, and they walked in on their friends, the proud new parents, having a row.

"Oh, good, Remus is here," Lily said when they came in, looking fed up. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was glaring at James. "The voice of reason. Remus, would you please tell this idiot—" she gestured to her husband. "That we are under no circumstances naming our child _Conclusive Proof that I had Sex with Lily Evans_?!"

Sirius roared with laughter at once, and even Remus had to crack a grin, and Lily looked so murderous that the three at once fell silent and James tried desperately to redeem himself by saying, "I was only kidding, dear, just a joke…"

In the end, they named their son Harry. Harry James Potter.

It was the happiest any of them could remember being in a long time.

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><p><strong>Once again, we eagerly await your reviews. Until next time!<strong>


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